If you cruise the toy aisles nowadays, you'll find that the majority of contemporary action figures come with dice, some form of stat card relating to a game, and possibly a stand. But back in the '80s and '90s, all figures came with were weapons and a bio file on the back of the card to be cut out and collected in a shoebox. Nearly every figure line featured these little cut-outs, but none of them had as much richness to their biographical sketches as G.I. Joe. But did any kids really pay attention to the details on these cards?

If they did, they may have questioned why so many Joes and Cobras were miserable degenerates, chronic gamblers, womanizers, and failed poets. The army seemed to have sent recruiters to the darkest backwoods of the U.S. to rope in any roughneck with a dangerous job and a mountain of speeding tickets in their glove compartment. Every card attempted to sugarcoat the fact that the Joes were a gang of lowlifes by noting that they were all qualified experts in NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms.

Blame it on Larry Hama, the writer of the Marvel G.I. Joe comic, who was also happened to write the a good portion of the file cards for the figures (and often, their names). Hama managed to deliver concise little background sketches in a very short amount of words -- sometimes with humorous and somewhat baffling results. Here are 20 of the most hilarious G.I. Joe bio cards -- much thanks to YoJoe.com for the images!

20) Road Pig

Usually you hear about women getting jobs based solely on their looks rather than their skills. Cobra flipped the sexist script though when they enlisted Road Pig. His bio card is basically a bunch of jokes about how disgusting he is, from his B.O. to how off-putting he is to dogs. It's like Cobra wanted to hire the Elephant Man, discovered he was unavailable, and settled for Road Pig. On the other hand, he has been arrested for "felony spitting," which he almost certainly has to be the first person in America to commit. What could that possibly be? Like, spitting on the president or something?

19) Rock & Roll

Initially the card sets him up for being a trigger-happy one-man battering ram; frothing at the mouth until the final bullet flies. Turns out he's just very hard of hearing. Rock & Roll played in a lot of garage bands in Malibu and the noise eventually injured his hearing. So the Joes enlisted him and gave him the big, noisy machines like gatling guns to handle. It's like taking advantage of a handicapped person.

18) Darklon

Darklon sounds like one of the baddest muthas in the ranks of Cobra. He's related to Destro, he's got a cast-iron castle in the Alps, and he has a private army at his disposal. For most super villains with similar nefarious resources, the creator rarely goes into where they got all the funds for the castles and whatnot. Luckily his card gives a glimpse into the source of Darklon's riches: he runs a telephone solicitation company. That's as evil as having a legion of roadside sign spinners advertising Cash For Gold.

17) Altitude

Altitude was an obvious choice for the elites at Joe; possessing two of the most sought after traits in a soldier: photographic memory and a knack for doodling. Before enlisting, Altitude was an animator, but then syndicated cartoon program industry crumbled and he was forced into a life in the military. Subtle, Hama. Real subtle.

16) Gnawgahyde

What an awful person! Gnawgahyde was driven out of Africa by his fellow poachers for being a card cheat. It's a good thing too because he would have eradicated every endangered species on the continent of Africa. Then he stole furs and was recruited by Cobra's Dreadnoks when they found him eating at an all-night donut and grape soda shoppe. Donuts and grape soda -- the most evil combination of breakfast pastries and sodas. Why the hell is this details even in his file? And why does Cobra even need a poacher?

15) Metal-Head

Holy hell this dude is terrifying. Even for an evil organization bent on world conquest like Cobra, Metal-Head seems like a bit much. He's a walking liability and a lawsuit waiting to happen from some murdered Cobra thug's family. His "blast suit" is covered in weapons that are all voice-activated, essentially making him a homicidal Inspector Gadget. But the weirdest part is his inability to stop thinking about shooting things, even at meal time. Did food somehow kill one of his loved ones? Because that's the only reason someone should calculate wind deflection off of meat loaf steam. Well, that or Asperger's Syndrome.

14) Ambush

There's really nothing funny about Ambush's card. It's a tragedy, really. When he was 10-years-old, he was playing hide-and-seek with some neighborhood kids. Three days later, young Ambush appeared from underneath his parents' porch. For a child to hide from his family and friends for so long, he's got to be terrified of something on a very deep and personal level. We're talking possible molestation. Even after joining the Joes, Ambush would disappear, battling the demons from his dark past.

13) Sub-Zero

This sunavabitch is fueled by pure "Meanness." Meaning, he must be a real peach to work with. He's a Winter Operations Specialist who hates the cold to the "Max." As the card continues to explain, he volunteers for cold weather assignments because he enjoys being mean. But what we see when we read between the lines is a sad, lonely man who has heaps of self-hatred he needs to work through.

12) Topside

The Joes honestly signed up any slob that stumbled into their recruitment office. Topside's resume here includes how he can "down a plate of greasy scrambled eggs and hot wieners" while sailing through the angry seas. His previous military experience seems to be exclusively that he was a hog farmer in Indiana, albeit the best hog farmer in Indiana, which was apparently enough for G.I. Joe to give him a gun and put him in its navy. Or maybe they just wanted to hire him before Cobra did, because there's no way they weren't scouting out a dude who called himself "Hog Master."

11) Bullhorn

Going through the years of bio cards, it seems that G.I. Joe would put a gun in the hand of anyone with a minutiae of talent. Any talent. Take Bullhorn for example. Blessed with the gift of gab, Bullhorn is described on his card as a good listener with choirboy looks who is compassionate and calm. How is any of that a benefit during the hell of combat? Sure he has some pistol-shooting trophies, but this is the last guy most would want at their side in when Cobra is closing in.

Somehow I missed that Rock 'n Roll is also NOT deaf or hard of hearing, it's just saying he likes the pounding sound, so I guess the contributor doesn't realize ITS A GODDAMN EXPRESSION.Also +3 for not knowing his GI Joe canon again. >.<

Crazylegs is hilarious. Pilot: We're almost over the drop zone.Crazylegs: *starts humming Bach*Random Joe 1: Dammit, at least hum Wagner. Something played before a guy slaughtered his enemeies.Random Joe 2: Don't even...Crazylegs: I heard a request. Treulicht geführt ziehet dahin, wo euch Segen die Liebe bawahr'... How is Spirit not on here? The first sentence alone is worth moar lol than all other GI Joe profiles put together: "Spirit comes from a family so far below the poverty line that they never realized they were poor. Was a hunting guide through high school. Served in Southeast Asia, then as a civilian continued his education. Returned to service for reasons inexplicable to anyone but a native American mystic warrior. Qualified expert: M-16; M-1191A1 Auto Pistol; Remington sniper rifle "Charlie is a Shaman, a medicine man. He's not a healer or a priest or a witch doctor. There isn't any equivalent in our culture for what he is unless we had shrinks who could actually help people." "So [poor] that they never realized they were poor?" lolwut "Shaman", by the way, isn't an Indian word. It's actually an Indo-European word (sramana) that took the other route around Asia, finding itself in Tungusic languages, where it was probably borrowed from the Mandarin xia men, an ascetic. It's actually considered little better than "witch doctor". Finally, "returned to service for reasons inexplicable to anyone but a native American mystic warrior" is, ah...Just say "some crazy indian shit" and leave it at that. The way you put it indicates you've been smoking peyote. And about five of you get why that's hilarious.

Also, Spirit for some reason wears a loincloth and has an eagle because, just because.

They fixed this with Airborne, who, thankfully, doesn't wear a loincloth. Airborne is wealthy, an accomplished lawyer, and OH JESUS CHRIST! "You look at him and sometimes he's looking right through you. Must be the Indian in him. The Navahos call it 'the far-seeing look.' Spooky!"

Also, he gave up legal practice to jump out of planes under fire?

This is why I hate tokens. Though to be fair, this is really more a cultural issue. I like X-Men, but X-Men's Indians are virtually all tied to Vietnam, Thunderbird became an hero, and Forge manages to be both the most magical and least magical Indian ever.

Though I think his fellow Battle Force 2000 Bostonian comrade has a weirder card.First of all, he was a WASPy cab driver in Boston. Dunno if I have ever seen one. Then he was robbed multiple times, delivered babies in the back seat, and then almost died when the Boston roads collapsed under him, so he decided to join the military.

Actually.. that doesn't seem ridiculous having seen the roads around here.

"Usury" is on his arrest record...USURY? Did Road Pig grow up in Medieval Italy?

Usury is lending money with interest, that's all: It's only remotely illegal if you charge ridiculously high interest, and even then it's only criminal if you attempt to collect through violence or threat of violence.

I have seen long threads on G.I.Joe forums about the weirdness of the filecards: they usually uncover a lot of goodies.

Hama (and whomever) dose like to add some irony and humor to the texts, like how Tripwire is a ham-handed klutz, or how Road Pig's card sounds like one big Rodney Dangerfield joke. But the highlights-of-natural-talents-through-quirky-back-story dose get really old... and really stupid!

Much of the texts also reflects Hama's hatred of Accountants, Lawyers, Politicians, and Australians (he severed with some Ausies in 'Nam, who where the biggest assholes in the world, which sounds like a G.I.Joe back story in and into itself; he dose not talk about his grudge against Accountants, Lawyers, and Politicians, but that might be a good thing. ;) ).

Oh yeah, the "donuts and grape soda" thing are iconic to the Dreadnoks--cropping up in most mediums.

I can only assume Cooper has little knowledge of Joe canon and did not bother to read any Dreadnok file cards or Gung-Ho's, considering not only is he unaware of the grape soda donut thing, but ALSO Gung-Ho talks like that because:http://www.yojoe.com/filecard/...He's from Lousiana and therefore giving commentary on Copperhead. Durrrr.

While not fitting into this list, give Hama credit for trying to give cool ID cards for the crappy Cobra-La guys, such as how 200 of thier soldiers faced an army of 10,000 and sustained only two wounded while wiping out their opponents. A shame Hama couldn't do more for the cartoon to really elevate it.

Oh! And according to an online interview with one of the original cartoon's writers, *Low Light* was actually the Joe who was assumed to have been abused as a child. In that way.

Also, Zarana was to have a topless scene in the movie (that got axed); there was a GI Joe/Transformers crossover proposed for the My Little Pony movie (that got denied); Gung Ho was gay; one of the female GI Joe crew chiefs in the cartoon was a lesbian, and Oktober Guard member Dragonsky was a Stalingrad veteran. From when he was six. This has been your daily Warp Your Childhood message. Now you know...

According to his file card, his parents were killed by a drunk driver when he was three... so the Joes yank him from the orphanage and nickname him "Hit & Run." That's unashamedly insensitive on so many levels. That's like naming a Joe "Alcoholic Stepdad" or "Colon Cancer." (or DOCTOR ABRAXAS)

Interesting that all the Cobra bio-cards featured here are all of the most frigging annoying characters from the cartoon. Christ, Metalhead and Road Pig. Watching those two fuckwits on screen was excruciating.

Hama wasn't involved with the cartoon. I used to really hate Cobra-La but over the years I've grown to like it, especially Pythona. There was some really crazy shit going down in the cartoon on a regular basis that rivals and even surpasses Cobra-La in the goofiness department. My biggest problem has always been what they did to Cobra Commander, I prefer bitter used car salesman over ancient blue scientist hands down, that among many other reasons is why the comic book and file cards are the only real GI Joe canon in my book.

Topless Zarana was the only one of those I was aware of. A shame that didn't happen though, topless Zarana along with nude Ripley fighting the Alien were missed milestones of geekdom. You don't have a link to that interview do you?

File cards; Scarlett has many brothers (the toon followed that, btw), comic book, seems she just has one sister.

Serpentor: Created by Destro and "the Interrogator" (Mindbender's early name, not the later Cobra character). Comics: Dr. Venom's proposed project that Cobra Commander greenlit for no apparent reason (other than Hasbro wanting the character in the comic, and Hama relenting).

I think a couple of those were from different interviews/message board Q&As, but all from Buzz Dixon. The one with mention of Zarana (with the original storyboards!) and the My Little Pony Movie bit is at joeguide . com/interviews/buzzdixon.shtml